Crisis in a negative school. On the question of the historical authenticity of the book of the Acts of the Apostles

The newest so-called negative criticism is undoubtedly experiencing a severe crisis. The time is not yet far off when criticism burst into the sanctuary of the most cherished beliefs of the Christian world like a stormy wave and threatened to destroy the very foundations of these beliefs, overthrowing the reliability of the books of Holy Scripture and relegating them to the level of ordinary human records, moreover, later in relation to the events of origin described in them. This destructive work of criticism was all the more impressive because it was carried out in the name of strictly scientific knowledge, and the critics acted fully armed with scholarship, before which believing theologians, who stood on the basis of a positive Christian worldview and lived by the traditions of the universal church, involuntarily had to retreat in embarrassment. In the eyes of advanced criticism, they were backward people and therefore their song was sung, and the work of the study of St. books should have passed into the hands of critics who, standing at the height of modern knowledge, would resolve all questions about the literary and historical significance of St. books, finding in them only “documents” of dubious importance and reliability, with proud self-confidence attributed to the realm of mythology all those facts that had hitherto been considered immutable and formed the very basis of the beliefs of the Christian world. The confusion throughout the Christian world was extraordinary, and many weak in spirit were even ready to renounce their dear beliefs and join the heralds of denial. But soon a strange phenomenon appeared. The further negative criticism went along the path of negation, the less self-confident it became, and as the literary and historical material that served as the main basis for negation began to be more and more developed, the more often critics began to come across facts that were insoluble for it and could be explained only from the point of view of the eternal worldview rejected by it. The confusion of the critics was primarily reflected in their attitude to the Old Testament facts, when the latest discoveries in the field of archeology of the ancient countries of the East unexpectedly provided us with a wealth of material for research, which was not suspected before, but which meanwhile provided unexpected confirmation for a number of facts, hitherto boldly classified by criticism in the field of mythology and folk art. It is enough now to read critical studies, for example. German biblical scholars of the 20s and 30s of the present century and compare their critical exercises with at least the latest archaeological research of the English Assyriologist Says in order to see on what shaky, one might say, childish foundations the learned critics of that time built their critical theories 1 . The same thing turned out to be true in their attitude to the New Testament. Many facts from New Testament history, especially where it comes into contact with classical history and antiquity, were safely considered to be the realm of fiction or thoughtlessness of the semi-literate authors of New Testament books, since these facts were not confirmed by classical antiquity or even contradicted its evidence. The Tübingen school, led by its leader Baur, became especially famous for this bold critical attitude to the facts of New Testament history, and with its intense work this school at one time made a huge impression on the entire scientific world. The particular strength of the argumentation of this school was that it was based on a diligent and comprehensive study of the classical basis on which all Christian literature of the first centuries arose. All this literature allegedly went against the established Christian tradition and therefore the latter is subject to rejection as unreliable, and with it the same fate should befall the most dear beliefs of the Christian church. Fortunately, the time of infatuation with this criticism soon passed, and when science, not preoccupied with any theories, seriously began to verify the works of the Tübingen school, it could not help but notice very significant gaps and shortcomings in it. First of all, it turned out that this entire critical movement was nothing more than a well-known spirit of the times. Rationalism, which constitutes the soul of Western Christianity, gradually eroding faith in the church and its traditions, by the first quarter of our century managed to create such an atmosphere of doubt that penetrated into all spheres of life of Western European society, and it, having already lost faith, involuntarily sought for its peace of mind one or another justification for its unbelief. And in response to this request of social thought, the Tübingen school appeared, which thus did not create rationalism, but only gave it a certain form and tried to find a strictly scientific justification for it. But it is clear that a movement, which has at its core ready-made soil in the form of a pre-formed negative opinion, can in no way be completely impartial and objective: constituting only a theoretical justification or justification of the prevailing mood, it therefore no longer had the makings of this objectivity, and that is why it turned out that this critical movement sinned against the most basic requirements of sound criticism, namely complete objectivity of judgment and impartiality in the assessment of certain things under study facts. For the Tübingen school, the first place was not facts, which alone were supposed to serve as material for the development of an integral worldview, but on the contrary, it proceeded from a ready-made proposal, and facts for it served only as a means for elevating this proposal into a firmly founded theory - in a word, carefully selected documents and facts were only adjusted to a pre-compiled theory. Obviously, such work, despite the vastness of its scientific apparatus, has absolutely no significance for true science and contradicts the basic requirement imposed by logic on any impartial research. Meanwhile, this lack of proper objectivity affected the Tübingen school in other, even more striking shortcomings. Since the lack of objectivity was the result of a preconceived prejudice, this even led to that completely anti-scientific extreme, which was expressed in the absence of any sympathy for the subjects under study. In the critics of the Tübingen school, all those facts with which the most dear beliefs of the Christian world were associated not only did not arouse the slightest sympathy, which, at least in part, could have kept them from treating them unfairly, but, on the contrary, due to a certain opinion, they lost all historical value in their eyes, and therefore, when it was necessary to make a comparative historical assessment of the facts of New Testament history with the facts of classical antiquity in the event of their contact with each other, they always took the side of the latter and in case of disagreement between these two orders, preference was certainly given to the facts of classical antiquity and the significance of the former was categorically rejected. This is already such an injustice that sins against the elementary requirements of scientific criticism, and yet this blatant injustice permeates all the scientific works of both Baur and his followers. It was enough, among the rubbish of all kinds of documents from classical antiquity, to find some dark, isolated, essentially meaningless evidence of a secondary and tertiary author or satirist, for the whole school to rejoice, if in this evidence, with the help of microscopic analysis, it was possible to find some distant hint of something that stands in contradiction with the whole narrative of some New Testament book, and this entire book calmly (and perhaps not without gloating) was sacrificed to this dark testimony and declared unreliable and inauthentic. Cases of this kind are too well known to everyone who more or less follows the progress of German negative-critical literature for it to be necessary to dwell on them in detail; but they were precisely the main reason why, when the first enthusiasm passed and the time came for a calmer attitude towards the matter, confidence in the works of the critical school weakened. When independent research began in this same area by more independent scientists, the followers of the Tübingen school themselves partly realized their passion and Baur’s student began to retreat along the entire line from the positions of their teacher. Meanwhile, independent research, moreover, based on new discoveries, both in the field of ancient writing and archeology, then a whole series of such facts that the leaders of the Tübingen school did not even suspect, and these newly discovered facts in the aggregate did not resolutely reconcile with the conclusions of negative criticism and, on the contrary, in most cases they brilliantly confirmed the facts of New Testament history. Moreover, with the expansion of the range of research in the field of classical antiquity, impartial science also discovered facts that no longer do any credit to the moral conscientiousness of critics, since it was discovered that the latter often cited in support of their favorite theories such facts that in reality did not yet exist (in the scientific sense) and which became the property of only the latest research. 3 And the result of this entire literary-critical movement was that the Tübingen school lost its prestige, and even those Mohicans who continued to adhere to their favorite theory no longer dared to present it with the same arrogant absolutism, but modestly limited and curtailed it in accordance with new facts of scientific discoveries and research. But the matter took an even more serious turn when the specialists of classical knowledge themselves began to study facts related to classical antiquity. The Tübingen critics, although they made extensive use of the facts and evidence of classical antiquity to confirm their theories in relation to New Testament history, were still theologians for whom the interests of theological views were in the foreground, so they studied classical antiquity not as an end in itself, but only as a means to confirm their favorite theological theories and views of a certain kind. Therefore, no matter how extensive their erudition in this regard was, it did not have independent significance, and therefore the conclusions based on it necessarily suffered from one-sidedness and bias. It was erudition that sought not to understand known facts as an object of purely scientific research, but to substantiate one or another theological theory with the help of these facts. That is why it is of such great interest to us that this attitude to classical antiquity aroused the interest of the most learned specialists of classical knowledge, and they also paid attention to that intermediate area where the facts of classical antiquity come into contact with the facts of New Testament and church history. And then a startling fact emerged. Representatives of classical knowledge, having begun to study this kind of facts with their characteristic scientific accuracy and objectivity, with scientific techniques developed by strict logic and with a disciplined mind, turned out to be incomparably more impartial than the Tübingen theologians, because for them it was important not to confirm this or that theological theory, but to understand the facts themselves as material for history. And this was all that was needed for the triumph of truth. As soon as the matter was approached without any pre-occupied theories, but solely for the purpose of understanding and investigating the facts themselves, all the pitiful groundlessness of the Tübingen constructions with their forcibly pulled up facts and unfounded proposals was immediately revealed, and the truth appeared in all its radiant light; and this truth was that the facts of New Testament history stand up to the strictest criticism and the authors reporting them, contrary to the assertion of the Tübingen school, are not only completely reliable and reliable witnesses, but also historians who belong to a place along with the greatest historians of antiquity. And this view was expressed not by some minor, insignificant representatives of classical knowledge, but by the primary scientists standing at the head of the scientific movement in the field of classicism. It is enough to indicate a few names to confirm this position. Among the independent learned historians who expressed their positive views on the facts of New Testament history is the world-famous historian Leopold Ranke. As the head of the historical-critical school, he became famous for the depth and accuracy of his historical works, the thoroughness of his historical-critical method, with the help of which he, with brilliant clarity, separated the historical husk from the true grain of historical truth, and this famous historian in his “World History”, outlining the historical era of the emergence and initial spread of Christianity, contrary to the Tübingen critics, recognized the complete historical authenticity of the direct witnesses of this era, such as especially the author of the book “Acts of the Apostles,” St. Luke. Next to L. Ranke in terms of scientific authority, and even higher in his knowledge in the field of his own classical history, E. Curtius, the generally recognized head of modern classicism; and this scientist, having touched upon the deeply interesting - both historically and theologically - fact of the presence of the ap. Paul in the center of the classical world in Athens, openly expressed his conviction in the complete historical authenticity of the very narrative about this in the book “Acts of the Apostles”. “Anyone, in his literal words, who denies the historical authenticity of the story of the Apostle Paul’s stay in Athens, thereby tears out one of the most important sheets in the history of mankind.” 4 Among the English scientists, with the same independence from the learned critics of the Tübingen school, the pan-European famous scientist Ramsay spoke out, who openly expressed his views in this regard, in his famous essay on “The Christian Church in the Roman Empire in the First Two Centuries,” an essay that made a deep impression on the entire scientific world, as evidence of a completely independent scientist who valued truth above all else. Readers of our magazine are quite familiar with this major work, significant parts of which were the subject of presentation in a number of articles, 5 and therefore we will not repeat those striking conclusions that the learned author came to through independent research in the field of contact between Christian history and classical antiquity. Suffice it to say that the author, having exposed in many respects the falsity and exaggerations of negative criticism, brilliantly restored the meaning of many such facts, which, as previously based on the Christian Church, were boldly considered by critics to be in the realm of fiction. But the learned author did not stop there. Brilliantly defending the reliability of the evidence of the post-apostolic age, and the result of these studies was his new work, which managed to arouse general attention in the scientific world and went through two editions in a few months. This is an essay by Ramsay, published under the title: “Ap. Paul, as a traveler and a Roman citizen," 6 takes us precisely into the depths of the apostolic age and receives all the more interest because he directly takes as the subject of his research the history of the life and works of that great apostle of nations, who precisely in the history of his activity provided the richest material not only for theology, but also for ancient archeology and geography - a mass of that cultural and historical material that is especially dear to the historian of the ancient world in the transitional period of the latter's life. And this new book by Ramsay is for us receives special interest in view of the fact that a scientist in the field of classical knowledge, taking as the subject of his research, so to speak, the central personality of the apostolic age, studies her activities according to all the rules of strict classical science. In this regard, Ramsay took a further step in the field of studying Christian antiquity on classical grounds in comparison with Leopold Ranke and Curtius. They only touched on Christian antiquity from this side, and Ramsay directly enters this very area and carries out a thorough study of all the facts and data in it, subjects them to strict verification through the facts and data of classical antiquity, and the result of this research and this verification is reflected in the amazing fact that the learned classic is amazed at the accuracy of the data that New Testament writing gives us, and comes to the openly expressed conviction of the complete reliability of those Christian writings, in which lies the history of the apostolic age. This fact is even more striking because Ramsay, according to his own consciousness, began to study this area far from prejudice, since he was strongly influenced by the luminaries of negative criticism. But when he, without relying on their authority, decided to personally carry out this comparative critical study, he became convinced that the theories of this school were more based on proposals and pre-conceived opinions than on soberly studied facts, and therefore, rejecting his idols, he openly admitted this and thereby brought about a new triumph of truth. By the very subject of his scientific research, the author had to deal with the book “Acts of the Apostles,” which constitutes the main source of the history of the life and work of St. Paul, and Ramsay really first of all focused his attention on the nature of this holy book. The question ahead was extremely interesting. The book of “The Acts of the Apostles” is, so to speak, the most historical book among the New Testament books, and its historical interest is heightened by the fact that it touches precisely on that extremely interesting area for historical science, where the new Christian world came into contact with the ancient classical one. In view of this, researchers have long paid attention to it, but unfortunately, mainly those who belonged to the negative critical school or at least were strongly influenced by it, and therefore all research usually boiled down to finding those imaginary historical errors or inaccuracies with which this book supposedly abounded. The adherents of Baur's critical school found so many such errors and inaccuracies in it and considered them so rude and unforgivable that under their weight the very character of the book as a historical one lost all meaning, and even if the critics did not completely deny any historical reliability for it, in any case they classified its author as a third-rate historical writer, whose works do not deserve special respect, as vague and unreliable. This view stubbornly persisted in negative-critical literature for quite a long time, despite the fact that the more the science of classical archeology and history delved into its subject and expanded its knowledge, the more often it encountered hitherto unknown facts that amazingly confirmed all the smallest details of the story of St. Luke. Mommsen did especially a lot in this regard, whose research in the field of Roman state law and legal relations between Rome and the provinces shed so much light on this hitherto little-studied and little-understood area that now the science of Roman antiquities itself has entered a new period - the Mommsen period, which differs significantly from the pre-Mommsen period. All the most ingenious proposals and constructions of critics, made before these studies of Mommsen and seeming to be the height of scientific accuracy, depth and authority, often now turn out to be childish constructions that have no scientific value; and in most cases these are precisely the very constructions on which negative criticism based its disdain for the historical reliability of the book of Acts. Ramsay resolutely notes this amazing fact, and it was precisely this that most of all shook his confidence in the correctness and authority of the negative school and forced him to independently verify all the data related to this. And when he took the path of independent research, a completely different picture opened up before him, and this is all the more remarkable because, in his own words, he began to study the book of Acts with no predisposition in favor of its historical authenticity. "On the contrary, he says, I began in a mood unfavorable to it, because the wit and apparent completeness of the Tübingen theory at one time completely convinced me. At first it was not my task to study this subject in detail; but later I often came into contact with the book of Acts, as an authority in the field of geography, antiquity and social life in Asia Minor, and gradually I became convinced that in various details this narrative revealed a startling truth. In fact, starting with the re-engaged idea that this book was essentially a work of the second century, and never relying on the reliability of its evidence regarding the conditions of the first century, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in the study of various dark and difficult phenomena." 7 And then further study of the ancient classical world finally convinced Ramsay of the groundlessness of the theory of the Tübingen school. This school was precisely trying to prove that the book “Acts” is a work of the 2nd century - with a pretension, however, to depict events in such a way that they correspond to the author’s opinion about the church issues of his own time. All theories of this kind imply that the atmosphere and the whole setting of the book bear the stamp of the second century, and these theories have been based on the evidence that the details given in the book are not accurately depicted and are colored by ideas of the second century. "All the efforts of the former school of critics, says Ramsay, were directed towards giving the necessary evidence for this, and in this attempt they revealed such a misunderstanding of the real character of ancient life and Roman history, which was often amazing and which was decisively overthrown with the progress of research in the field of Roman history. All such theories belong to the pre-Mommsen era of Roman history; they are now impossible for a thorough and educated critic, and hardly continue to exist anywhere else except perhaps popular magazines and stories of a semi-religious nature.” 8 Thus the book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles, according to the authoritative opinion of Ramsay, undoubtedly constitutes, contrary to the assertion of negative criticism, a work of the first century, as the Church has always believed. But this does not yet determine the entire dignity of the book. A book may belong to the first century, but in terms of its historical merit it may belong to the works of the second or third category. "Historical works, says Ramsay, are of various kinds and are reliable to varying degrees. 1) There are historical stories that weave a fictional story into the framework of history. To this class belong some of the apocryphal tales about the apostles, which arose apparently from the desire to provide Christians with a replacement for the popular stories of that time. 2) There are legends in which the popular imagination, working over a number of generations, surrounds the real person and real events of such mass of constant material, so that underneath it is hardly possible to discern the historical grain. 3) There are stories of the second and third category in which the writer, either carelessly and without due discussion, using good sources, or not possessing sufficiently detailed and reliable sources, gives such a narrative of past events that is to a certain extent reliable, but contains errors in facts, in grouping and proportion and colors the story of the past with tales of his own time. When using this category of historical works, the modern scientist, straining his historical tact, must compare this narrative with other evidence that can be obtained from other sources and discuss whether what is attributed in it to individuals is compatible with the possibilities of human nature. 4) Finally, there are historical works of the highest order, in which the writer has superior means and knowledge, either from personal acquaintance with the event, or from access to authentic primary sources, and in the study of his subject discovers genius, literary art and his own historical insight into the character of people and the movement of events. Thus, the author grasps the most important events, focuses the reader’s attention on them, subjecting them to a more complete explanation, touches more lightly and briefly on less important events, completely omits a lot of unimportant details, and makes his work an artistic and idealized picture of the forward movement of a given period. – Great historians are the rarest of writers. Thucydides is admittedly the typical example of the highest class of historians, and it is doubtful whether any other writer can by common consent be placed next to him. But all historians, from Thucydides onwards, must of course be subject to free criticism. And here it turns out that the fire that burns the minor historian only makes the real master even stronger and brighter, clearly demonstrating his superiority. The harshest criticism will, in the course of time, do him the best service. But the critic, in turn, requires high qualities: he must be able to distinguish truth from lies, he must be sincere, unawakened, a person with an open soul. There are many such critics who have largely shown their preference for the false over the true, and it can rightfully be said that in our time there is still no such class of literary works in which such a huge predominance of error and false judgment would be noticed as in the field of literary criticism. For some of our critics Herodotus is the father of history, for others he is an inaccurate reproducer of the chatter of the uneducated masses of the people; one writer proves the weakness of Thucydides with ominous length, another cannot discern a single flaw in him. But recognizing the full extent of the risk and the likelihood of condemnation to which a bold attempt may be exposed, I venture to give in the following pages the reasons that force me to place the author of the book of Acts among the historians of the first rank. 9 Then the author actually proves that St. Luke, even assessed from a purely literary-critical point of view, by the extraordinary transparency and harmony of his historical narrative, by the classical purity of the finishing of various details, and especially by the ingenious proportionality of the parts of the narrative and their connection with the main idea, can well be placed next to such brilliant representatives of history as Herodotus and Thucydides. This result is extremely important. If representatives of light criticism with a light heart attributed the book of “Acts” to the 2nd century, considering it nothing more than a historical novel compiled by an unknown, but in any case not distant - second or third degree author, then they came to this conclusion simply on the basis of their theoretical and critical considerations hatched in a learned office. Neither Baur nor his closest students ever considered it their duty to test their theories by an objective study of the underlying data. And now there appears a learned researcher (“one of the remarkable people of our time,” who, in the interests of objective scientific research, did not limit himself to theoretical considerations, but himself went to the scene of the action set forth in the book of “Acts,” carefully studied all the geographical and archaeological features of Asia Minor and Greece, checked the information reported by St. Luke on the basis of all data available to modern science, and in his book directly and frankly expresses his conviction in the complete historical The reliability of this book and its author places it in the category of the greatest historians of the ancient world. It is clear that the negative school must retreat before such an authoritative review, and it really receives such a blow from Ramsay’s book, from which it will undoubtedly not recover for a long time. The entire book of the English researcher is in fact a scholarly commentary on the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Of course, this is not a theological commentary, and it was impossible to demand such a commentary from a classical scholar and not a theologian. But it is all the more interesting precisely in the sense that the secular commentator, on the basis of purely scientific research in the field of classical knowledge, follows step by step the historical evidence of the book being commented on and, in all its needs, finds amazing accuracy in the presentation of events and facts, as far as they can be verified on the basis of independent evidence of classical antiquity. Such a commentary forms the necessary outline for any theological commentary that wants to stand at the height of modern scientific knowledge, and Ramsay's book has rightly attracted the attention of both English and other theological literature of the West. In order to familiarize our readers with this learned commentary, we will present several chapters from it, and precisely those chapters where the narrative of St. Luke about the sermon of St. Paul in the centers of the classical world - Macedonia and Greece. But that's for next time. As an example, we can point to the attitude of former rationalist critics to Chapter XIV. book Genesis. This chapter was considered the invention of some Jew, who, living after the Babylonian captivity and having become acquainted with Babylonia, decided to introduce into biblical history a fictitious story about the victory of Abraham over the Babylonian coalition, a story filled with confusion and contradictions of all kinds. Meanwhile, the latest research in the field of history and archeology of ancient Babylonia brilliantly confirmed the historical nature of this remarkable episode. See his book The “higher criticism” and Verdict of Monuments 1894, pp. 161 et seq. See eg. in the article “The Christian Church in the Roman Empire in the First Two Centuries.” "Christian Reading" for 1894, I, 8 et seq. See in decree. article pp. 9 et seq. See his deeply interesting abstract in “Christian Reading” 1894 II, p. 1 et seq. – in our translation. See decree. Above is an article entitled: “Christ. Church and the Roman Empire in the first two centuries” by A. Pavlovich. St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman citizen, by W.M. Ramsay. London. 1895. The second edition has now been published, but we are using the first. You might be interested in: